The documentary The Sheikh and I is the story of what happens after American filmmaker Caveh Zahedi receives an email inviting him to make a film for the Sharjah Biennal.

Sharjah is one of the United Arab Emirates, and as Zahedi tells us, rather far along in the film, the whole country is essentially the personal possession of the Sheikh of Sharjah. The biennale is run under the patronage of his daughter, the Sheikha. (BTW: spellcheck is not liking this word.) Any time that Zahedi wants to consult with them, both the Sheikh and Sheikha of Sharjah are as elusive as Godot, or the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Zahedi is invited to make a film about “art as a subversive act.” The offer is made in a bizarre tongue that he calls ArtSpeak, which is as good a description as any. (If you think the manuals for your appliances are incomprehensible, you ain’t seen nothing yet.)

While the offer seems to give Zahedi free reign, he finds that too good to be true. After repeated prodding, Rasha Salti, the woman who made the offer, comes up with three rules: no frontal nudity, no mocking of the prophet Mohammed, no mocking of the Sheikh of Sharjah.

Somehow, Zahedi has a problem with this last injunction, it’s like the pebble in the shoe, the paper cut on the finger, the hairball stuck in the cat’s throat – it’s the thing he can’t ignore.

But he accepts the offer, and decides he’ll “go there without an idea and just improvise it.”

Documentary filmmaker Caveh Zahedi goofs around on a stuffed camel, in a scene from his film The Sheikh and I.

Zahedi sets off for Sharjah with his wife Mandy, young son Beckett, and a rudimentary crew. He has decided to mix fact and fiction, and make a film about making a film, not exactly the most original idea out there. He seems to making up the nebulous plot as he goes along and he frequently changes it. One minute Beckett is being kidnapped, the next, the Sheikh of Sharjah is the intended victim. (Assuming that someone can be persuaded to play him.) And Zahedi decides that he’ll make his fictional sheikh sign a proclamation giving the guest workers some rights.

While many ask, nervously or suspiciously, if Zahedi has permits to do what he’s doing, he does meet many people who gamely agree to take on roles in his film. Few of them seem to be natives of Sharjah – it seems that most jobs, at all levels of society, are held by guest workers. These guest workers have few if any rights and can be sent packing for the slightest transgression, which makes their willingness to go along with Zahedi’s wacky schemes all the more surprising. That some later decide to quit the project is less surprising. That his film was never shown at the Sharjah Biennal is not surprising, either. As one participant points out “in a place where there’s no freedom of speech you can’t say that there’s no freedom of speech.”

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi and his crew. To my eyes, the pinstripes and the scowl give him a sort of gangster look.

There was talk of blasphemy, worries about bombs, the possibility of fines and imprisonment for people in Sharjah and a cease-and-desist order for Zahedi. In the end, though, he was given permission to show the film anywhere except within the Emirates, and promised that no one who appeared in it would suffer any repercussions.

The Sheikh and I is remarkably talky. Caveh Zahedi spends more time telling us what happened as opposed to just showing it, and while there are some funny and surreal bits, there aren’t nearly as many as I expected . . .frankly, it’s not exactly the best film I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, I know and respect the organizers of RIDM, so I got to wondering why they chose to show this film.

Here’s what I came up with: We can ask ourselves what other filmmakers would do in Zahedi’s place, what we might do ourselves, we can appreciate the bravery or lunacy of the people who go along with him, we can be glad we have fewer restrictions on what we do and say than the people of Sharjah have, and we can wonder just what were the biennial organizers thinking, anyway, when they invited Zahedi to take part. If we’re going to get all worked up about freedom of speech, then part of me thinks that the film in question should be a bit more sober and serious. But on second thought, freedom of speech should apply to the silly and the frivolous, too, right?

More often than not, I go to films by myself, but I think the discussions one could have after watching The Sheikh and I might well be more entertaining than the film itself. So if you go, take some friends with you for your post-film discussion.

The Sheikh and I, Thursday, April 25, 7 p.m., at Excentris, 3536 St. Laurent Blvd. After the film, there will be a Q&A with director Caveh Zahedi via Skype. The film is being presented as part of Docville, an outgrowth of RIDM, Montreal’s documentary film festival. While the festival itself takes place in November, Docville shows a documentary on the last Thursday of each month, at Excentris.

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